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Director: Michel Hazanavicius
MPAA Rating: (PG-13)
Studio: La Petite Reine

French writer-director Michel Hazanavicius appears to be perfectly content staying presently, and permanently, in the past.  Maybe he should stay there for good.  Having already given us two wonderfully spoofy 007 homages with OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio, his latest, The Artist, reaches back to the grand silent film era of the late ‘20s.  Magnificently filmed in black and white, shot at 22 frames per second and almost entirely silent, The Artist revisits the plot of the much-filmed Hollywood saga A Star Is Born, adds a dash or two of Singin’ in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard, and charms and moves the hell out of us.

The film stars Jean Dujardin as a dashing, cocky, aging film idol who befriends an ambitious young beauty (Bérénice Bejo) whose gimlet eyes are fixed on stardom.  Despite warnings from the studio boss (John Goodman, in Wallace Beery mode) about the advent of sound, the matinee idol stubbornly refuses to test for talking pictures and, while the protégée’s career skyrockets through the early ‘30s, his career tragically implodes.  His wife (a vinegary, just-right Penelope Ann Miller) and millions of adoring fans desert him and only his long-suffering chauffeur (James Cromwell) and plucky, scene-stealing Jack Russell terrier stand by him.  Packed with tips of the hat to the films of directors Chaplin, Borzage, von Sternberg– there’s even a misfired musical cue from Hitchcock – the movie may be the stuff of recreated magic but, these days, we’ll grab our magic wherever we can.  Heart-warming, funny, romantic, lovingly nostalgic and acted to elegant, self-aggrandizing and gallant perfection by Dujardin, whose performance won him a Best Actor prize at Cannes, The Artist recreates a movie era so full of wonder and emotion that it may make you question whether the way we were wasn’t a whole lot better than the way we are.

About the Author

Playboy Contributing Editor Stephen Rebello has written numerous Playboy Interviews and 20 Questions features. He is the author of such books as the notorious Bad Movies We Love (with Edward Margulies) and Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the latter of which has inspired a dramatic feature film set for production in 2012. His most recent Playboy Interviews include Josh Brolin and Cameron Diaz.

I’ve been with my boyfriend for eight months. The relationship is wonderful and the sex is awesome. The other night we engaged in anal sex, which we have both done before, but this time I had a total emotional breakdown. My orgasm was accompanied by a crying episode so intense it took us both by surprise. Everything was great and I didn’t experience pain, but the tears came in buckets. Can you tell me if this is a normal reaction or why it happened?
– T.G., Memphis, Tennessee

It’s nothing to worry about. Many people experience an emotional release with the physical release of climax. Annie Sprinkle calls it a crygasm. “I’ve talked to so many women who tell me that when making love or having an orgasm they have a little cry at the same time,” she says. “It feels so good.” There was a time when lovers were expected to cry. “Eighteenth century novels are full of scenes that suggest or, in a few cases, represent orgasm with tears as the most sublime experience possible,” notes historian Tom Lutz, author of Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears. “Weeping in love was considered the norm, and a lover who couldn’t weep wasn’t worth having.” In your situation, the intensity of anal sex may have played a role. The anus and rectum are more delicate than the vagina, and anal intercourse requires a great deal of patience, preparation and trust. We also carry more stress than we realize in our sphincters. Penetration requires the muscles to relax, and the tension can dissipate in ways that surprise us.

Chrome is within striking distance of Firefox for second place in worldwide browser usage.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

If one in 50 people on the Web move from Firefox to Chrome, Google’s browser will unseat Mozilla’s for the No. 2 spot in worldwide usage.

That’s because, according to Net Applications’ November browser usage measurements, Chrome is now within 4 percentage points of Firefox. With a 2 percentage-point increase in one and a 2 percentage-point decrease in the other, Google comes out on top.

Firefox dropped 0.4 percentage point to 22.1 percent of usage in November, while Chrome gained 0.7 percent to 18.2 percent. If that rate was to continue, Chrome would outpace Firefox in March 2012, but fluctuations make such predictions difficult.

Firefox once was the prime challenger to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which for years languished in the doldrums of software development. Now it shares that role with Chrome and, to a lesser degree, Apple’s Safari. Microsoft is in high gear again, though, with IE9 a credible challenger and … [Read more]

For Android Honeycomb users, Google Catalogs could’ve served as an incredibly useful mobile shopping tool this holiday season.

It aggregates catalogs from over a hundred popular retailers, lets you search through and mark favorite products, and gives you links to make purchases directly from retailers’ sites. It even lets you create and share visually stunning collages with friends. Unfortunately (for us and for Google), the app appears to be marred by a few performance issues that can’t be overlooked.

(Credit:
Google)

The app’s interface is beautiful, with high-resolution graphics and simple navigation. You can flip through pages with a quick swipe, and view prices, pictures, and other product details with a single tap. The app also makes it easy to add items to a Favorites list or share products, pages, or entire catalogs with friends.

Where Google Catalogs shines brightest, though, is its Collages feature, which lets you create, save, and share collages featuring any item from your Favorites list. With the beautifully simple collage editor, you can drag images around, change backgrounds, crop, layer, even add borders and text boxes to your creations with ease. These collages are perfect for keeping track of collections of items you plan to purchase as well as images or pages you might find inspiring.

(Credit:
Google)

Unfortunately, as great as the Google Cata… [Read more]

Cut the Rope, one of the hottest smartphone games, just got a free standalone version for both the iPhone and iPad (universal) featuring new challenges and holiday-themed levels.

Each level features the Christmas tree background, and adds new stockings that teleport candy.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Certain apps have staying power on the top-10 list at the iTunes App Store and Cut The Rope offers just the right mix of challenging physics-based gameplay, family-friendly graphics, and tons of levels to explore to keep it near the top.

Just like last year’s Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift, the 2011 version helps you get into the holiday spirit. Developed by ZeptoLab, the game comes with 25 new levels, holiday-themed obstacles, and a new Rocket level at the end to add to the fun. There’s also a bonus feature that lets you make greeting cards by adding the game’s mascot, Om Nom, to images from your iPhone image library.

Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift (free) comes with 25 holiday-themed levels to explore. Each level features holiday themed backgrounds with Christmas trees, and even the ropes themselves have been made to look like strings of lights. In later levels, new holiday stockings let you drop candy into one stocking, then watch it shoot out of the another to add to th… [Read more]

UNO, one of the most popular paid card game apps for Android, is now available for free download.

Previously only available in its $2.99 paid download form, the new ad-supported UNO Free still offers the same nostalgia-inducing gaming experience.

(Credit:
Gameloft)

For those who have never played UNO (or have never experienced childhood), it’s a classic color and number-matching card game for up to four players. And with its Android incarnation it can be played via Wi-Fi with friends, or against computerized opponents. The app also has a Tournament Mode that increases in difficulty and includes a bunch of unlockable achievements, just to keep things interesting.

UNO Free is available now for download in the Android Market. Meanwhile, for an ad-free experience, you can still get the original UNO for Android for $2.99.

[Read more]

The new beta for Microsoft's latest version of Security Essentials.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Microsoft has launched a public beta for the new version of its Security Essentials software for anyone to download and test drive.

The software is available free through a “download now” link for the beta on the Security Essentials Web site. But getting to the file itself requires a bit of a trek. Clicking on the link brings you to a Microsoft Connect page where you need to log in with a Windows Live ID and password.

You’ll then see a page describing the features in the new beta along with the system requirements and installation instructions. Clicking on the link to the download page (listed in Step 2 of the instructions) displays the title of the file–MSE Public Beta. And then clicking on that title finally takes you to the page where you can actually download the software.

Microsoft is offering two editions of the Security Essentials beta–a 64-bit version called mseinstall-amd64fre-en-us.exe and a 32-bit version called mseinstall-x86fre-en-us.exe. You can download both versions in one shot or separately depending on whether you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit ve… [Read more]

HP’s WebOS-based and now-defunct TouchPad

The fate of WebOS will be decided in the next couple weeks.

“We should announce our decision in the next two weeks,” HP CEO Meg Whitman told French newspaper Le Figaro in an interview (translation) published today. “This is not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people which is in limbo.”

Although Whitman didn’t indicate whether she’s leaning either way in her decision, she did say that HP needs “to have another operating system,” seemingly indicating that WebOS could stage a comeback.

HP announced in August that it was making sweeping changes to its business, including considering spinning off its PC business and discontinuing its mobile hardware, like its TouchPad tablet. The move effectively put WebOS in a holding pattern until its fate could be determined.

However, those decisions were made under former HP CEO Leo Apotheker. In September, he was replaced with Whitman. And since … [Read more]

Apple released Safari 5.1.2 (Mac or Windows) to users today, adding some fixes and stability improvements to its official Web browser.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

A must-download for any Safari user, the update includes various improvements to stability, addresses issues that caused hangs and excessive memory usage, and will now allow PDFs to display within Web content.

The update also addresses an issue that would cause Web sites to flash white while browsing.

The full list of feature enhancements and fixes is not yet available at Apple’s Web site at the time of this writing, but we’ll update the Safari listing at Download.com when we receive more details.

[Read more]

Microsoft released its fourth “platform preview” of Internet Explorer 10 today, adding a collection of new features to what’s shaping up to be a surprisingly feisty browser.

The new version supports a number of new features detailed in a blog post by Rob Mauceri, program manager of the IE group. Among the features are support for JavaScript typed arrays, which lets Web apps handle raw data such as files better, and HTML5 video features such as the ability to link to a specific time in a video and to add captions.

“These foundational capabilities are what developers building native applications depend on: working with binary data and files, controlling selection and hit testing in application UI, and providing accessible video content with captioning,” Mauceri said.

But in case there’s any doubt about who’s the boss at Microsoft–the IE team or the Windows team–there’s one telling data point that shows it’s the latter. The fourth IE10 platform preview, like the impressive third, is available only in a developer’s build of Windows 8. That means any developer who wants to test a Web technology with IE10 will, to at least a small degree, become a Windows 8 dev… [Read more]